The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

The Good
The graphics are simply amazing and they smoothly transition the real time rendered FMVs to clips from the movie that isn't out yet! The gameplay is simple yet engaging and the leveling system is not overly complex. You just kill some enemies in a level and then use the experience to purchase new moves and spells. The Cooperative multi-player is extremely fun as none of the games graphics fade since the game only has to render one new person. The music in this game is from the movies and always fits the theme. There are no overly difficult combos like in most other fighting games. The locations from the movie/book are faithfully recreated in the game and you'll feel as if your battling through a spider filled maze or a massive fortress.

The Bad
In a couple levels the use of the catapult on buildings is there. However when you hit some of the towers. They fall as if they were made of Styrofoam. In cooperative there are no checkpoints and not enough lives to share. So if one of the players dies twice or each dies once. Your back at the start of the level. There are many times that I fought my way through hundreds of orcs only to die and be forced to do it over. Only because of my brothers mistakes.

The Bottom Line
Even with it's few shortcomings this game is worth every cent I payed for it. It's a buy for fans of the movies/books and also for people who just want a good hack and slash RPG with few puzzles. This game is nearly perfect even though fantasy games were never my cup of tea this one had me playing the Xbox whenever I got a moment to do so! Also this is one of the few games with good cooperative play.